Highlights
- The truth you are very well aware of is that you can’t fix it all. You know this, you always knew it regardless of your level of skill. But try telling that to the part of your brain that sees every inefficiency as a moral failing. (View Highlight)
- The first step is recognizing that not everything broken is yours to fix. Not every tool needs replacing. Not every bad experience is a call to action. (View Highlight)
- A New Kind of Skill
What if the real skill isn’t technical mastery? Or better yet what if it’s emotional clarity?
• Knowing which problems are worth your energy.
• Knowing which projects are worth maintaining.
• Knowing when you’re building to help—and when you’re building to cope.
• Knowing when to stop. (View Highlight)
- Note: Same goes with problems in life
- Now it has become provocative. I can see the patterns that I wish I couldn’t, find oversights that I can attribute to a certain understanding (or the lack thereof) of a certain concept and I can hear what has been echoing in the head of the computer illiterate person who conjured the program I have to debug. (View Highlight)
- Why is this config hardcoded when it could be declarative? (View Highlight)
- But unlike the story of Sisyphus, the curse is not placed onto you by some god. We built the boulder ourselves. And we keep polishing it on the way up. (View Highlight)
- Every new tool I built was a sandbox I owned: No weird bugs. No legacy constraints. No decisions I didn’t entirely agree with. Until, of course, I became the legacy. (View Highlight)
- Software doesn’t stay solved. Every solution you write starts to rot the moment it exists. Not now, not later, but eventually. (View Highlight)
- Libraries deprecate. APIs change. Performance regressions creep in. Your once-perfect tool breaks silently (View Highlight)
- If you replace every part of the system over time, is it still the same tool? (View Highlight)
- Note: Ship of theseus
- The Illusion of Finality
I think we lie to ourselves.
“If I just get this setup right, I’ll never have to touch it again.” “If I just write this one tool, my workflow will be seamless.” “If I automate this, I’ll save time forever.” (View Highlight)
- It frames programming as a conquest of sorts. A series of battles you win, or challenges you complete. But the imaginary war never ends. You don’t build a castle. You dig trenches. And they flood every time it rains. The trials are never complete. (View Highlight)
- You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. (View Highlight)
- We write a new tool because we are overwhelmed. Refactor it, not because the code is messy, but your life is. (View Highlight)
- Programming gives you instant feedback. You run the thing, and it works. Or it doesn’t, and you fix it. Either way, you’re doing something. (View Highlight)